Book contents
- Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Employment Discrimination Opinions
- Feminist Judgments Series Editors
- Advisory Panel for Feminist Judgments Series
- Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Employment Discrimination Opinions
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Advisory Panel for Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Employment Discrimination Opinions
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Supreme Court and Gender Narratives
- 3 Pregnancy Discrimination
- 4 Intersectional Approaches to Appearances
- 5 Harassment Because of Sex
- 6 Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination as Sex Discrimination
- 7 Systemic Claims and Gender: Proving Disparate Treatment and Impact
- 8 Retaliation
- Index
5 - Harassment Because of Sex
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 2020
- Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Employment Discrimination Opinions
- Feminist Judgments Series Editors
- Advisory Panel for Feminist Judgments Series
- Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Employment Discrimination Opinions
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Advisory Panel for Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Employment Discrimination Opinions
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Supreme Court and Gender Narratives
- 3 Pregnancy Discrimination
- 4 Intersectional Approaches to Appearances
- 5 Harassment Because of Sex
- 6 Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination as Sex Discrimination
- 7 Systemic Claims and Gender: Proving Disparate Treatment and Impact
- 8 Retaliation
- Index
Summary
In Chapter 5, Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson and Oncale v. Sundowner Services deal, respectively, with the proof standards for sexual harassment and the question of whether and when Title VII forbids same-sex harassment. The rewritten Meritor dramatically alters the standard for employer liability, holding employers strictly liable for sexual harassment by supervisors, with no affirmative defense. Rewritten Oncale concludes that same-sex harassment (and hence harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity) are illegal sex discrimination that occur “because of sex.” By making employers strictly liable, the rewritten Meritor would have effectively precluded hundreds of subsequent lower court cases and two Supreme Court cases. While the original Oncale openly refused to relate the egregious harms that the plaintiff had allegedly suffered, the rewritten opinion employs feminist storytelling techniques to demonstrate the harms suffered by the male plaintiff at the hands of his male coworkers. It explains that harassment by men of other men often occurs because of societal pressures on men to prove their masculinity and to police the boundaries of sex and sexuality.
Keywords
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- Information
- Feminist JudgmentsRewritten Employment Discrimination Opinions, pp. 215 - 265Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020